DIY Tutorials

We’re slowly trying to knockout this list of things to do before we can have our house re-appraised. The last time we mentioned the list we were cleaning out our garage (see link above). This time we’re sharing about patching the holes in our master bedroom.

When we had an outlet added to our library, the electrician had to cut holes through the drywall to run wire from a nearby outlet. If you want to avoid mutilating your walls, you can ask if the electrician can run a wire down from your attic; which wasn’t an option for us, because of our furnace blocks access. Even with the holes, we’re glad we now have an outlet for our coffee maker, milk frother, and mini-fridge in The Library. But glad or not, the holes had to go, so off to Lowe’s we went.

To patch the holes, we considered a number of different options. We originally planned to enlarge the 3 closest together holes — I know, it sounds crazy to make the holes bigger, but hear me out. We were going to make the 3 holes one large rectangle, which would reveal the studs and then allow us to add a new piece of drywall, cut to size and secured to said studs. However, when we were at Lowe’s, we realized there was a simpler solution. We found adhesive wire mesh made for patching holes that could be cut (with scissors) to a custom size. We went with this brand:

I started by cutting the FibaTape to a size slightly larger than each hole, and then placed it sticky side down over each hole. I’ll be honest, it didn’t stick very well.

After I pressed and pushed and got it to adhere to the wall the best I could, I started to add a layer of drywall patch over the FibeTape.

We actually found a tub of Dap Lightweight Spackle and a tub of Dap DryDex Spackling when we were cleaning out our garage. I tried both on the wall, and I can tell you, lightweight spackle is not the way to go. It’s is a little too dry and crumbly for this sort of application. I recommend the DryDex Spackling. It’s thicker, and goes on pink and turns white when it’s dry. It’s typically located by the sheets of drywall and not the paint (where you might find the lightweight spackle) at Lowe’s, just FYI. Here’s a picture of the one we used:

Once the layer of drywall patch dried, Blair sanded it down to prepare for the next step, adding the knockdown. Because we were going to add texture over the patches, it didn’t need to be perfectly smooth, but she did sand it to be level with the rest of the wall. Nothing is going to scream “Patch Job!” more than a huge lump on your wall. We used a can of spray-on knockdown (different from orange peel texture) to make sure there were no “bald” spots, also an obvious patch job indicator. Personally, I hate that our walls are textured, because spraying the texture to match is really tricky. We were actually going to have a friend, who is an artist, do it for us, because after having to patch a few spots in our kitchen we’d rather not mess with it at all. However, it actually turned out well. With this particular can of knockdown spray you can adjust the texture size between light and heavy. We started by spraying a light texture over the wall.

You want to spray a good bit outside your patch as well to make sure the texture blends in with the rest of the wall. Per the instructions, we let sit for about two minutes and then lightly ran a knockdown knife (to the left in the photo below) over what we had sprayed. Then we switched the nozzle to “heavy” and sprayed the area again.

Another tip, is to spray this stuff like spray paint. Keep your hand moving, and spray it in short burst, so you don’t end up with a thick, goopy mess dripping down your wall. You might also notice that we stuck one edge of the tape to the wall, and let the rest of it stick out a bit. This worked well as a barrier for rogue spray and we didn’t have to cover everything completely.

Again, after letting the texture dry a little (about 4 minutes instead of 2 this time), we lightly knocked it down with the knockdown knife. It took about 4 applications of spraying before we felt like it matched the rest of the wall, but the true test would be painting it to see if it really matched or not. We let it dry for 48 hours — not something you have to do, but we wanted to make sure it was good and dry before adding any paint.

And the verdict is…

A match! That area, because it’s under the window is typically in shadow, so I think that helps a big deal in making things look seamless. Shadow or not, though, it still a confidence booster for us when it comes to spraying texture.

**Update: We didn’t win the challenge, but I hope you still enjoy our lamp. Let us know if use our tutorial to make your own project. You can see who did win the mystery box challenge here.

For the last few posts we have been talking about Delightfully Noted’s Old School Mystery Box Challenge (catch up here and here). Well, all of the crafts have been revealed and voting is officially open as of today. You can vote here.

This means I can finally reveal our project…

…and because it was ridiculously easy to make, I am also going to give you the how-to.

You can do this project with any lamp — or even a mason jar, if you wanted to make a vase. I started with this lamp (already owned):

The pony beads were my mystery item from Jennifer, and I picked up some jute twine from Michael’s for $12. Other supplies used were: super glue, hot glue, a gold paint pen (these), watercolor pencils (similar), and a pen brush (similar), which I already owned. So yep. It cost me $12 to make this lamp. In case you’re wondering, the lamp was purchased at TJ Maxx a few months ago for around $14.

First, I cut enough twine to fit around the neck of the lamp. I put super glue on the ends and stuck them together. This did involve holding the ends for a few seconds and getting glue on my hands, because I wanted the ends to stick together, but I didn’t want the twine to stick to the lamp. After the glue was dry, I got more twine and measured (starting at the twine I had just put around the neck of the lamp) and cut pieces that were twice the size of the lamp. It will depend on the size of you lamp, but I cut about 14 pieces of twine.

After the pieces of twine were cut, I then took one piece at a time and folded it in half, stuck the folded part under and over the ring on the lamp, and then pulled the ends through the loop (made by the fold) to make a knot. (I wish I had a picture of this part, but hopefully that’s a clear enough explanation.) I did this with each piece of twine, all the way around the lamp.

This left each piece of twine having two parts. For the sake of this tutorial, my sanity and yours, lets call them an L piece (left piece) and an R piece (right piece). To make the diamond shapes, I started in the center of the lamp and took an R piece from one strand and an L piece from the opposite strand directly adjacent to my first strand (not the same strand). I then took 3 white beads, slid them onto both the L piece and the R piece, and then made a knot underneath the last bead.

I continued to do this all the way around the lamp. I repeated the same steps, taking an L piece and an R piece from opposite strands, but instead of putting both strands through the beads, I put 4 pink beads on the L piece and 4 pink beads on the R piece before knotting them together. The wide, blunt corners of the lamp were not playing nicely with the beads, so I opted to have just twine around the corners and add one bead then a knot just below the corner.

Now in case you think they’ve really upgraded pony beads, my bag did not come with gold beads. No. I had to hand paint those with a paint pen. But this gave me the opportunity to make bad references like, “Stay golden pony lamp.” Life has a way of working out that way, doesn’t it? I did get a lot of gold on my fingers, but it didn’t take too long to do. I painted them as needed, and while they were drying (took about 2 minutes) I fooled with the twine and other beads. You may also notice from the photo above that there are quite a few pieces of tape. After having the twine + beads move and ending up with unevenly placed knots one too many times, I taped those suckers down. This also aided in getting a better diamond shape, because I could pull the twine taught without fear of messing up some other part of it.

After the pink beads, I added another gold bead, a knot, and then realized my twine was too short to go all the way to the bottom of the lamp. Womp. Womp. For reals. Rather than take the whole thing apart and start over, I decided this little light lamp of mine was going to be of the Bohemian kind. So after the knot I added 1 more pink bead and then 3 fuchsia beads. (If you’d like your twine to go all the way to the bottom of your lamp, then x4 or x5 when measuring your twine.)

The twine is different lengths, which for a Bohemian look I liked, but that meant I couldn’t tie a final knot in most of the strands. So I used my hot glue gun to put a bead of glue right under the last bead on each strand. I also taped the everything down and left it for a few days to train the twine to lay flat. Additionally, I wrapped and glued a few extra pieces of twine around the neck.

As for the shade… I found similar watercolor pencils to the color of my beads, and just scribbled up and down all the way around the shade. (The shade is made of a sort of matte, textured silk-like material.)

After the 10 seconds that that took, I went back over my scribbles with my wet pen brush. (You could probably just use a damp craft brush if you didn’t have one of these fancier things.) The more water you add the more diluted the color will get. Definitely be careful not to put so much water that the colors drip all over the shade — unless you are going for that sort of thing.

After adding the darker fuchsia color to the shade, I repeated the same steps with a lighter pink. I finished the whole thing off by tracing the top and bottom edge with my gold paint pen.

And that’s it! A thousand words later, and I think it took me longer to write this post than it did to actually make the lamp. The lamp is currently residing in Akira’s room. It’s not exactly the colors I wanted for her room, (I had hoped to do more coral than pink), so I might change it up a bit, but she loves it, so I might just change-up her color scheme. It’s not like we’ve started working on that yet, anyway!

Let’s look at more pictures, shall we?

Can you believe this was inspired by cheap-y pony beads?! Thanks again, to Delightfully Noted for hosting such a fun challenge! Don’t forget to VOTE for us (#3). Winner will be announced on Friday!